Out of all the Emily Dickinson poem suggestions that we had to choose from, the one that caught my attention the most was My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun (764). The reason being that I saw “gun” in the title, I’ve always been fascinated guns and weapons ever since I was little because of all the action movies that I grew up watching, so reading this poem was just like watching a movie. When the poem begins it’s kind of hard to read or understand because of the dashes that it consists, but after reviewing it over and over again, it’s clear that Emily is referring to someone taking her away at gun point it seems and how she feels stuck or helpless. As the poem progresses it sounds like she’s being taken somewhere against her will. In this case it will be to the woods and she’s trying to speak to the person that’s taking her but she’s being ignored. Later on it seems like she doesn’t know how she should feel or react, she’s not sure if she should smile. It’s kind of sad because it’s clear that she’s being kidnapped against her own will and doesn’t know what to do with herself. It kind of reminds me to a show that I just finished watching recently called “13 Reasons Why” on Netflix that has a lot of drama that compares to what’s happening in this poem. Towards the end of the poem it gets interesting because I believe that she actually has the opportunity to escape but doesn’t act upon because she doesn’t want to hurt anyone. When she states “For I have but the power to kill, Without – the power to die” it’s clear that if the opportunity of hurting someone was presented to her, she wouldn’t act upon it because if she did she’ll just hurt herself. In other words by hurting herself I think she means going against her morals.

In the Manifesto Packet, Aphorisms on Modernism by Mina Loy it kind of sounds like a negative ritual of definitions as it progresses. By that I mean that it goes on defining each term in a dark manner. For instance, when it talks about Morality it spoke out to me the most, the reason being that it says “Morality was invented as an excuse for murdering the neighbors” you can see that it’s different in the way that it tries to express a message. When it talks about “murdering the neighbors,” I think the author approaches morality in the negative sense. Thea actual definition of morality is principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior. In this case killing your neighbor will obviously be a wrong or bad behavior. I also found this line interesting because it made me think of one of the ten commandments that says “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”. In other words by saying that morality was invented as an excuse for murdering the neighbors, does that mean that morality goes against one of the ten commandments? The thing that I like about this excerpt the most is that it’s real, in other words, it’s not worded in a way that seems fake or cheesy. Now a days I’ve noticed that most writers are scared to write the way that they actually want to write, so I appreciate the realness and darkness of this excerpt.

Handball

Serving is the start of an opportunity to win

Short is not hitting with effort

Long is hitting it with anger

Down is what prevents you from being successful

Point Game is a step away from what you desire

Game point is the end of all your efforts

The manifesto that I wrote above I was trying to reflect Mina Loy’s excerpt in my own way. Instead of giving definitions that were dark I tried to lightened up the mood by writing it about a sport that I’m really passionate about that is Handball. Instead of making it dark like she did in her excerpt, I did something similar and made it dramatic. Since I didn’t have definitions specifically, I used the call outs that you say in handball while playing and defined it in the way it makes me feel.